I devoured a book this weekend called The Camel Knows the Way by Lorna Kelly.  Lorna Kelly had a beautiful somewhat glamorous life in New York City in the 1970s; she was Sotheby’s first woman auctioneer.  But circumstances in her life led her to respond to God’s call, and go wherever he asked her.  And what he put on her heart was traveling to India to work with the Missionaries of Charity, the order founded by Mother Teresa.  Now, she doesn’t leave her life for good and become a nun, I don’t think I would have loved the book as much if she had.  (Nothing against nuns of course.)  Instead someone gives her a book about Mother Teresa for Christmas one year and she becomes entranced with her and decides to go to Calcutta for three weeks to work alongside the Sisters.  It’s an impulsive move but one that pays off in so many ways.
The book begins with describing each day of that very first trip to Calcutta in March of 1981.  The reader is treated to vivid descriptions of the work that these incredible women do each day of their lives.  But the glorious part is that you get to see the work, the patients, the beggars, the nuns and rickshaw drivers through the eyes of a wonderfully imperfect Christian woman doing the best she can to love Jesus.  I mean who doesn’t a love a woman who shoes up at the Missionaries of Charity house with an Yves St. Laurent blouse and fire engine red nail polish ready to “help the poor.”  That’s my kind of girl.
It is this kind of honesty, giving every detail of not just what she wore, but what she felt that made this book so enlightening about God’s love for us and how we can serve him.
She recounts her irritation with attempting to feed the sick and starving her first few days, she was impatient with how long it took and how little her charges could eat.  She describes working beside the sisters at their hospital and nearly getting sick while trying to bathe a patient who had a bedsore that had run down to the bone.  She also writes about her frustration with herself and her guilt about having such feelings, but the beautiful thing is that she doesn’t dwell on them, or let them stop her, she continues both with the work and with her spiritual life.
Lorna Kelly’s writing is alive with a desire to be near Jesus as well as humble honesty about her shortcomings. Through her frankness I was able to see this thrilling picture of God as the provider and the lover of our souls.  God enabled her to face each patient, each outrageous example of poverty, or violence or illness, he provided for all. He also gave her a friendship with Mother Teresa which is lovingly remembered by Lorna in the book.  And as one reads through her life’s journey there is a realization that God has provided another Mother to her that can give her the love and acceptance that she did not receive as a child, but that which all of us so desperately long for. 
God is good.
Obviously I loved the book and it’s given me so much to think and pray about and hopefully write about here if I am so inspired.  But I wanted to share my enthusiasm now with everyone here that is so generous with sharing their own passions and pastimes.